The View from Narayan
by Three-Eyed Squirrels
Summary: Wrote this the night I finished Exile, and my friend liked it and said I should put it somewhere. Take me in my dreams recurring, one more longing backwards glance.


I didn't know what else to do. This whole thing left me totally lost...everything I did in all these ages left me unprepared as to what to do when I finally reached Narayan and looked Saavedro in the eye for the first time. The images…oh, those were nothing, I saw now. I stood in all three lesson ages and watched the images and all I could think then was how much I was respectively learning…about this man, about the past, about what Sirrus and Achenar did that even back on Myst I had never known. I was in a lesson age, and my mind reasoned that this was only more learning for me. But it didn't prepare me for coming here, for standing in Narayan and seeing Saavedro for the first time face to face for more than that one moment in Atrus's study.

It was different here being face to face, seeing his madness directly. I could see him fighting with himself…half the time yelling furiously, the other half struggling to remain calm when he spoke to me. I've never seen that with anymore before. Then I learned how the shields worked. Then I saw the look on his face and the disbelieving way he said, "They're alive?" and wanted to run over and look with him, and part of me wanted to laugh with some kind of strange joy that I could barely recognize to see Narayan living out beyond the shields, a distant city glowing in the pink clouds.

All I could do was watch as he discovered the way of the shields as well, and realized that I was the only thing that stood between him and his people.

I watched him go out to the gondola, but I still didn't trust him to give me the book. I think it was the hammer that did id...it was a very big hammer...or maybe it was the dire warning of how linking books leave doors that don't close behind you. After everything I read and saw with this man, it was ominous enough to make me pause a moment. Maybe it was the way he looked at me, his eyes insane, desperate, and holding a promise of danger if I did the wrong thing. So I admit it. I panicked. I ran upstairs and shut off the power. Then I went back downstairs.

I was by the vine trellis when Saavedro came to me. And when he begged.

I felt for a moment that I was going to die, that this man's terrible grief and desperation would tear me into pieces and take me into madness along with him. I knew at that moment that this would be a memory I'd carry with me to my grave, that would still haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.

I took Releeshahn. Of course I did, when he handed it to me, begging desperately for me to let him go. I was surprised after all of this...this wild search across the ages for this book...that I felt no joy or triumph when I felt the book in my hands, looking down at its worn cover and metal locks and the delicate D'ni writing along the cover. All it felt like was a book in my hands, not something that I had practically given my life searching for, that I had back in Atrus's study a lifetime ago lunged forward in the midst of the flames and pressed my hand to the J'nanin book, acting on pure instinct, blind knowledge that I had to get that book back at all costs. I didn't realize until I reached J'nanin how foolish that was to just run after that man without a link back. And now I had Releeshahn, and…and if I wanted, I could get back to Tomahna now without a second glance and give Atrus what I'm sure he was desperately worried for.

But I couldn't. I looked briefly at Saavedro, who had turned away from me now, too lost down the paths of his own despair. And what, leave him here? Forever?

"Hold on," I said, an idea coming to me. "I know what to do."

He didn't respond. I don't think he heard me. His grief was too deep, he was too far gone, his desperate sobs filling the room to the point where I too wanted to reach out and cry with him, even though these weren't my people.

I hoped my idea would work. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't.

So I ran back upstairs and turned the power back on.

For a moment everything seemed to hang dreamily in the air, neither of us moving. I still had my hand on the lever when the shield melted, revealing Narayan once again. Then Saavedro turned around, very slowly, and looked at me. And I looked back, holding Releeshahn tight in one arm, my other hand still on the lever.

He looked at me, and then raised a hand...slowly...and waved at me. That was all he did. I raised my free hand and waved in response, and for a moment we both looked at each other, as if neither of us could manage anything more than a wave. There was more to say...there would always be more to say, I realized at that moment. But right now there wasn't anything to be said. I don't think either of us would have been able to find the right words had we decided to speak.

He looked at me once more and then got in the gondola, pulling the lever. I saw it start to move slowly down the wire, Saavedro facing forward, his eyes now seeing nothing but the living Narayan, his home, where his people waited, alive, and where his family might still be waiting after all these years.

I didn't realize I was crying until I saw the tears staining the cover of the linking book to Tomahna.


End file.
